Falling Up
by vine
Summary: Shikamaru wakes up in a hospital. A stranger is waiting. He hints at a life that never happened, but Shikamaru can't help but entertain these half-thoughts of shadows and leaves. Set in modern times. Couples to be determined.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This was something that wouldn't leave me alone, even as I was in the middle of writing chapters for other stories. I'm not sure if I'll post more, as this is my first venture into this fandom, and I'm hesitant, to say the least. Any comment as to characterization and such would be greatly appreciated.

This will end up featuring most of the main characters from Naruto, and I'm willing to consider couple requests, if the plot allows it.

Sorry about the ridiculously long AN.

**Disclaimer: *insert witty way to say 'don't own' here***

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It was probably the fastest Shikamaru had ever managed to do anything.

No wandering between consciousnesses, no staring at half defined shapes. Just a hitch in his throat, and he jackknifed into a sitting position, trying to catch his breath as he struggled to force air into his lungs.

His airways finally clear, he opened his eyes. The view that met them caused his brow to crumple in confusion. Beeping machines and clear substances passing through tubes that wound their way around him. Beyond that, white walls and a stranger, pausing with one hand on the doorknob.

The stranger turned around, and smiled when he met Shikamaru's questioning gaze.

"Oh, good. For a second there, I was worried you were going to keel right over again."

"What?" Shikamaru tried to answer, but no sound came out of his tight throat. He tried again, and managed to squeak out an unintelligible mess. It didn't matter, anyway. The stranger had already opened the door and disappeared down the hall.

There was nothing he could do about that. There were other things to worry about, anyway. First of all, why was he in a hospital? That was obviously what this place was. He didn't remember any accidents. Had he been sick? Unlikely.

And who was the boy that had been waiting for him? There was a bag of chips left abandoned next to the chair by the door, half eaten. It had fallen over, spilling out onto the spotless linoleum floor.

Footsteps outside the door caused him to tense, but it was just the stranger returning, grinning at the nurse that followed him in.

"See, I told you he would wake up!"

The nurse looked up, and her eyes widened, as she took in Shikamaru, leaning against the bed's headrest. It only lasted a second, before she covered it up with a face that was all business. Moving towards a monitor to his left, she nodded, before turning back to the beeping machines.

"Choji, would you go and tell Gale to inform the Naras that their son has woken up?"

The boy nodded, and Shikamaru watched him leave. He was a bit pudgy, with round cheeks and messy brown hair. And he was still no one he recognized.

Maybe he had lost some memory. What the hell had happened to him?

The nurse was smiling down at him, as one hand reached out to check his pulse.

"Nice to see you awake, Mister Nara. Do you remember how you got here?"

He struggled for a moment, once again trying to make sense of it, before shaking his head.

Nodding, the nurse stood back. "Well, that's natural. You were in an accident. It's not my the right time to get into all the details, but it involved a bus that you were on, and some unstable gases."

Shikamaru still couldn't recall any of this. "Oh. Do I know him?"

His voice came out at a croak, but much better than before. The nurse seemed to guess what he was talking about, too.

"Choji was in the same accident as you," she explained, going back to the monitor. "You didn't know each other beforehand, but he always comes and checks on you for a few minutes after school and on most weekends."

Shikamaru blinked, realizing that he had been asking the wrong question. He had skipped the most important one.

"How long-" his voice disappeared, but he licked his lips and tried again. "How long have I been out?"

The nurse turned, as the door began to open once again. Shikamaru could still catch her words, though by the dropping in his stomach and the ringing in his ears, maybe he wished he hadn't.

"Funny thing, that. It would have been a year tomorrow."

A year. He had been in a coma for a year.

Questions buzzed in his head, and he clenched his teeth. He didn't know enough to answer any of them. What had happened. Who had been there. What he had missed in the year that had passed. Why the stranger, Choji, actually cared enough to check on him every day. And why he couldn't remember anything.

Choji bounced in, grinning widely. "The girl at the front desk is calling the Naras right now."

"Thank you, Choji." She looked back at Shikamaru. "Are you feeling all right, then? I'm going to bring you some water, and some soup too, if you want it." At his nod, she smiled. "Excellent. I'll be right back."

As she left, Choji sat back down in the chair he had abandoned before, and picked up his chips. There was a long pause, punctuated by the crunching of potato chips. The boy seemed unperturbed at Shikamaru's stare.

"Its good to have you back." Finally, Choji finished off the last chip, and broke the silence. "Knowing you, you've probably already started figuring some things out." There was a hopeful look in his eyes, but Shikamaru only grew more confused.

It must have shone in his face, because Choji's shoulders slumped, and he sighed. "You don't remember."

Shikamaru shook his head. "You were in the accident with me, right? Choji."

"Yeah." He fiddled with the chip bag, before crumpling it up in one fist. "I-"

The door swung open, and two people burst through it. These figures Shikamaru recognized. His mother and father, both looking a little teary eyed, rushed to his bedside, where his mother immediately enveloped him in a hug. His dad, on the other hand, keep shooting weird looks at Choji, who had slouched down in his seat, as if trying to become invisible.

The next time Shikamaru managed to take a peek at the chair, the boy had disappeared. Not that he had much time to think about this, between excited, sometimes sobbed words of his mother, and the awkward, relieved lines his father managed in between. One of the nurses was constantly shoving more food at him, and within the hour, it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. Finally, his parents were ushered out, and someone was kind enough to turn off the light, leaving him alone.

It was so strange, people who he was used to seeing every day acting like this. Like he had returned from the dead. Which he supposed he had, in a way. The whole thing felt off. Like something was missing, or very, very wrong.

He would dwell on that more tomorrow. When he wasn't so tired, and could start to wrap his brain around all of this.

Tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Disclaimer: I don't own.

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Choji was used to the walk home from the hospital. He did it every day. Most of the time he just looked at the clouds, pretending that maybe these were the same ones that, years ago, him and Shikamaru had stared at in Kohana.

Today, though, he was much too excited to brood. It had almost been a year since they got here, and finally, finally Shikamaru was awake. The worry that had been haunting him- what if he never woke up?- was gone. He was already entering the residential part of town, halfway home, before his grin started to slip.

Because he hadn't remembered. He hadn't recognized Choji, and had accepted his parents with no odd looks or questions. But this was Shikamaru. The smartest guy he knew. He would figure it out. Even if Choji had to drag him all the way. He had done it before.

Smile back in place, he reached into his pocket, and pulled out a bag of chips. He began to munch on them as he made his plans. Shikamaru would be out of the hospital pretty quick, now. They had only kept HInata for a week after she woke up, and she had been much worse off than Shikamaru.

Speaking of Hinata...

"Choji?"

The pale, nervous girl stood in front of him, fingers pressed together as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. She was still too skinny, even though she had woken up over half a year ago. Or maybe she only looked that way to him because he couldn't get the picture of the other Hinata out of his head. The one that wouldn't be caught dead without her bulky sweater.

"Hey, Hinata!" He stopped, wondering why she was out here. Her house was a good ten minute drive away, up in the richest part of town.

She must have seen the confusion in his eyes, because one corner of her mouth pulled up. "I was at Ino's, working on a science project. I figured you would be coming back soon. I, ah-" Color came to her cheeks, as she looked at the ground. "I wanted to ask you something. About the dreams."

Choji stopped, his chip halfway to his mouth. It took him a moment to process what she said. When he did, he put the chip back in the bag. This might take a moment. "Yeah?"

Hinata shuffled again. "Well, um... I, ah, had one last night. A dream, I mean. I was wondering if maybe you could tell me what was happening in it?"

The chip disappeared into his mouth. "If I can. We weren't on the same team, so-"

"I remember," she whispered, so quiet that he couldn't tell if she had really said it, or if it had just been wishful thinking. Then her head came up, and she met Choji's eyes. Some of the strength that used to reside there had started to return, since her dreams had started. She said that they weren't really dreams. More like repeats of what she had seen when she was in a coma. Her father hadn't wanted to hear anything of it. But when Choji heard her slip up in English with a stuttering reference to the three ninja arts, he couldn't help but feel that maybe he wasn't the only one, after all.

That had been a month ago. With Choji's gentle prompting, Hinata had begun to remember more of her dreams. They were still only photographs and flashes, but it was better than the nothing that everyone else knew about their pasts.

This was the first time she had approached him directly, though. Before, it was always him who had initiated the exchange. He took this as a good sign.

"What is it?"

Hinata bit her lip. "Uh. I'm in a classroom, I think. There's a boy beside me, with the blondest hair- closer to yellow, probably. And he's whispering something to me. But I don't know what. He has-" She paused, then raised her hand, brushing three fingers along her cheek. "-markings, like whiskers or something." She stopped, looking at Choji. There was something like hope in her eyes, but it was quickly covered up by resignation. Like she expected him to scowl, snatch the hope away and call her crazy.

Instead, he frowned, trying to figure out what exactly she had been describing. "Was it a big room? More than a hundred people?"

She nodded, and her shoulders relaxed slightly.

Choji shoved another chip into his mouth. "It must have been the first part of the Chuunin Exams. It was a written test." He grinned widely at the memory. "The boy sitting next to you is Naruto Uzumaki."

"Naruto?" Hinata's forehead crumpled. "Naruto..."

Choji watched her think, and tried not to let the fluttering in his chest distract him. She was starting to remember. She didn't believe that it had all really happened, not yet. But she was starting to entertain the idea.

The screeching of tires cut their conversation short. A flashy limo pulled up beside the pair, and Hinata paled as the window rolled down.

The Hyuuga family's driver stuck his head out of the window.

"Miss Hinata, your father is looking for you." He didn't even spare a glance for Choji, but the boy didn't mind. He doubted Mr. Hyuuga would approve of him as a friend of his eldest daughter.

The Hyuugas hadn't changed much, even here in this strange, backwards world. There was still a hate for the orphaned cousin, still a power in the family heir. Choji hadn't had much interaction with them back home, but he knew the basics. And those were what tended to remain the same.

Waving as Hinata ducked into the back seat of the car, he continued on his way home. The basics were the same. It was the little details that were all askew. Well, those and the big things. Like cars. And the political structure.

Oh, and the fact that shinobi were nothing but glorified legends here, Choji reminded himself. His hands rolled into fists, crushing the few chips that were left. Couldn't forget that little fact.

He couldn't let himself get too bogged down in that stuff, though. That stuff was better left to the thinkers. Like Shikamaru, once he started to remember. For now, Choji dealt with the little problems. Like trying to keep track of all of his friends, when most of them only saw him as a chubby loser, a stranger that didn't know them from Kami.

And then there was that small issue about the two who had disappeared completely...

Choji groaned. Hopefully, Shikamaru would start to remember soon. This was much too much for him to handle.

He stopped in front of Ino's house, staring for a moment. But there was no movement in the windows. There rarely was.

Clenching his jaw, he picked up the pace.

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A/N: Filler chapter! Just laying down some building blocks here. I apologize, as it was rather boring. But it couldn't really be helped. Anyone want to chance a guess as to why Shikamaru was in a coma, and what exactly is going on? (If anyone gets it, I will be shocked enough to write them a one-shot. Pairing/topic of their choice) This fic will be in mostly Shikamaru's point of view, by the way. But because he is bedridden right now, I took the opportunity to give a little background.

Reminder: Couple requests are still open and needed.

Anyway, this chapter goes out to Dragon Mistress of the Heavens, for inspiring me to try this fandom. And then reviewing. And to FadingMoonlight, for also reviewing.


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